Re: [Phys-l] trimester course set-up

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

Mike VanAntwerp wrote:

> We're headed towards making all year-long class fit into 2 tri's and
> students have to take 8 total. 

What was the previous requirement?  Four semesters?  Five?  Six?



Other Things Being Equal, the trimester system suits my taste better,
if only because it fits the solar calendar better ... but as always,
the devil is in the details.

Compressing what had been a year-long class into two trimesters raises
some particularly satanic questions:
 *) If (for example) the intro-physics course is offered starting in
  fall-06 continuing into winter-07, when will it start again?
  Spring-07, fall-07, or what?
 *) If lots of two-trimester courses start in the fall, will there
  be lots of one-trimester courses available in the spring, to fill
  up the gaps?  Who will design these courses?
 *) Will other departments in the same institution be following the
  same practice?  If not, it could become very difficult for students
  to plan their schedules.


The whole idea of "compressing" courses has tremendous downside potential.
For years there have been many forces at work tending to make courses
a mile wide and an inch deep.  Compression usually accelerates and/or
provides "cover" for this process.  A cynic might predict that before
long there will be a switch back to semesters, and the aforementioned
2-trimester courses will be compressed again, compressed to a single
semester.

I would strongly argue that calendar-changes should be kept separate
from syllabus-changes.  That is, if you want to change the calendar,
just change the calendar from semester to trimester, keeping full-
year courses as full-year courses.  Then as a *separate* exercise,
on a course-by-course basis, if there is good reason to compress
this-or-that course from three semsters to two, go ahead and do
it.  Do it for well-founded course-related reasons.  Don't use a
calendar change as a pretext for making an ill-founded change.

As Michael E. and others have pointed out, converting a two-semester
course to a three-trimester course is no big deal.